honest-looking, clever mongrel, which was taken by his master to India.
"Sandy" became quite a regimental pet, but, though friendly with the
whole regiment, he clung throughout faithfully to his master. He was a
big, heavy dog, with a good deal of the bull in him, and more than a
suspicion of collie. The combination of these two breeds made him an
exceptionally formidable fighter. Nothing could flurry him, and his
great weight and powerful jaw gained him an easy victory over anything
he ever met, even when tackled one dark night by a young panther.
Unfortunately he developed a passion for killing everything that walked
on four legs--short of a horse or an elephant--and of domestic pets and
of poultry he took heavy toll. Nothing could break him of this
propensity; he would take any punishment quite placidly, and then
straightway repeat the offence at the first opportunity. And he
developed also a curious habit of tracking his master when he dined out.
No matter how "Sandy" was fastened up in barracks, before the meal was
half over in the bungalow where his master happened to be dining, in
would march the dog, quite calm and apparently at home, and would make
willing friends with everyone at table, except with his master, whom he
would steadily ignore throughout the evening. Though "Sandy" was very
far from being a lady's dog, and though at ordinary times he would take
small notice of ladies, yet now he would most gently and affectionately
submit to be caressed and fondled by all the ladies at table, and would
apparently in reality be the "sweet," good-natured "pet" they styled
him; yet too well his master knew from bitter experience that already
that evening had Death, in the shape of "Sandy," stalked heavy-footed
amongst the domestic pets and poultry of that bungalow. And morning
always revealed a formidable list of dead. "Sandy's" bite was sure; he
left no wounded on the field of his labours.
A PRIVATE OF THE KING'S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS
As the evening closed in, the heavy south-westerly gale that had raged
throughout the long-drawn summer's day gradually dropped, and blew now
only in fitful gusts. Instead of the sullen, unending roar of artillery,
which till past mid-day had stunned the ear, there was now to be heard
only the muttering of distant thunder; the flash of guns was replaced by
the glare of lightning flickering against the dark background of heavy
cloud that hung low on the horizon; and, except for an irregular
splutter of musketry, or an occasional dropping shot from direction of
the town, the ominous, sustained rattle of small-arms had now entirely
ceased.
The night of the 31st July 1759 had seen the French army march out
beyond the ramparts of Minden, to take up position against the Allied
Forces under Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick. So fiercely blew the gale then
that it drowned the sound of the town clocks striking midnight; so
furiously raged the storm with the coming of day that, to windward, even
the roar of cannon could not be heard, and it was only the dense clouds
of smoke that told they were engaged.
As day broke on the 1st of August the French, under a heavy artillery
fire, had attacked with fury, but now, repulsed and broken at every
point, they were driven back to their old position behind the town
ramparts, where for a few hours longer they staved off surrender.
On the Allied right, where fighting had been hottest and most stubborn,
the chief brunt of the action fell on six regiments of British infantry,
supported by three battalions of Hanoverians. Never have troops of any
nation reaped greater glory, nor earned more lasting fame, than that day
fell to the lot of those battalions.
In the first line were the 12th, 37th, and 23rd Regiments; in the second
line, the 20th, 51st, and 25th, the latter that famous regiment raised
in Scotland in the year 1688 by the Earl of Leven, and then called
"Leven's" or the Edinburgh Regiment. At Minden it fought as Sempil's
Regiment, later it was known as the King's Own Borderers, and now it is
familiar to all as the King's Own Scottish Borderers. Entirely
unsupported, these two lines of scarlet-clad men marched steadily
against a mass of cavalry, the flower of the French army. Without haste,
without even a sign of hesitation or of wavering, over ground swept by
the fire of more than sixty cannon, they moved--a fire that ploughed
through their ranks and mowed down men as the hurricane blast smites to
the earth trees in a forest of pines. Not till the threatening
squadrons of horse began to get into motion did these British regiments
halt, and then, pausing coolly till the galloping ranks were all but
within striking distance, they fired a volley so withering that men and
horses fell in swathes, while the survivors reeled in confusion back on
their supports. Never before had volley so crushing been fired by
British troops. Up to that day, musketry had seldom been blasting in
effect; firelocks then in use were singularly clumsy weapons, noted for
anything but accuracy, and, to add to their inefficiency, it was not the
practice to bring the cumbersome piece to the shoulder, and thus to take
aim, but rather, the method was to raise the firelock breast high and
trust to chance that an enemy might be in the line of fire. Now all was
changed. During the Peace troops had been taught to aim from the
shoulder, and Minden showed the effect.
In spite of their losses, however, the French horse rallied and came
again to the attack, this time supported by four brigades of infantry
and thirty-two guns. "For a moment the lines of scarlet seemed to waver
under the triple attack; but, recovering themselves, they closed up
their ranks and met the charging squadrons with a storm of musketry
which blasted them off the field, then turning with equal fierceness
upon the French infantry, they beat them back with terrible loss."[2]
[2: Fortescue, _History of the Army_.]
Yet again the enemy came on; squadrons that up to now had not
encountered those terrible islanders, thundered down upon them,
undaunted. Through the first line this time the horsemen burst their
way, and surely now they must carry all before them. But no farther went
the measure of their success; the second line shattered them to
fragments, and all was over. Back behind the ramparts fell the French,
crushed and dispirited, for nothing now remained to them but surrender.
And for this great victory Prince Ferdinand's thanks were chiefly
bestowed on those British regiments whose magnificent valour and
steadiness had alone made it possible.
But the British cavalry, under Lord George Sackville, did not come in
for equal commendation. Lord George and the Prince had long been at
daggers drawn. Hence, probably, it may have been, that when the French
were broken and in full flight, and Prince Ferdinand's repeated orders
to bring up his cavalry reached Lord George, that officer ignored or
wilfully disobeyed them. The Marquis of Granby, Lord George's second in
command, had already begun to move forward with the Blues, and behind
were the Scots Greys and other famous regiments, thirsting to be at the
throats of the French. But Lord George Sackville's peremptory orders
brought them to a grudging and reluctant halt. Thus, throughout an
engagement which brought honour so great to their countrymen, the
British cavalry stood idle in the rear, chafing at their inaction and
openly murmuring.
And now that all chance of further fighting was over for the day,
parties of the men, irritated and bent on picking a quarrel, had strayed
from their own lines, and made their way over to the bivouacs of the
British infantry regiments, where already camp fires were twinkling, and
the men around them slaking with wine throats parched by long hours of
marching and fighting.
Those were days when, after a victory, discipline went to the wall and
was practically non-existent; they were days when the bodies of those
who were killed in action were robbed, almost as they fell--nay, when
even the wounded, as they lay helpless, were stripped naked by their own
comrades and left to perish on the field (though _that_, indeed, was
common enough amongst our troops even in the Peninsular War half a
century later). And now, here at Minden, as ever after a great
engagement, when villages or towns are sacked, much plunder had fallen
into the hands of the victorious army; wine and brandy from the
wine-houses of the wrecked villages was being poured recklessly down the
ever-thirsty throats of the men, and soldiers, already half drunk, were
to be seen knocking out the heads of up-ended wine-casks the quicker to
get at their contents, whilst others, shouting and singing, reeled
about, many of them perhaps with a couple of loaves, or a ham, or what
not, stuck on their bayonets. Such scenes, and scenes worse by far,
were but too common in those days, and even the authority of officers
was of small avail at such a time.
Into the midst of such a pandemonium as this came small parties of the
cavalry, most of them already excited with drink and ready for any
devilry. Among the noisiest and most quarrelsome of the dragoons were
two non-commissioned officers--brutal-looking ruffians both of them--who
made their way from group to group, drinking wherever the chance
offered, shouting obscene songs, and making themselves insufferably
offensive whenever a man more quietly disposed than his comrades
happened to be met. Boastful and quarrelsome, these two, with a few
dragoons of different regiments, at length attached themselves to
Sempil's Regiment, amongst whom it chanced that a group of men, more
quiet and well-behaved than the general run, sat around a fire, cleaning
their arms or cooking rations, and discussing the battle and the heavy
losses of the regiment. It was not difficult to guess that the majority
of the group were men bred among the great, sweeping, round-backed hills
of the Scottish Border--from "up the watters" in Selkirk or
Peeblesshires, some of them, others again perhaps from Liddesdale,
Eskdale, or Annandale, or one of the many dales famous in Border
history; you could hear it in their tongue. But also there was in those
quiet, strongly-built men something that spoke of the old, dour,
unconquerable, fighting Border stock that for so many centuries lived
at feud with English neighbours. Many of them had joined the regiment
four years earlier, when it had passed through the Border on its march
from Fort William to Buckinghamshire.
But if they had seen much service since then, never had they seen
anything to approach this famous day of Minden, and as the long casualty
list was discussed, many were the good Border names mentioned that
belonged to men now lying stiff and cold in death, who that morning when
the sun rose were hale and well.
"Rob Scott's gane," said one.
"Ay, and Tam Elliot," said a grizzled veteran. "I kenned, and _he_
kenned, he wad never win through this day. He telled me that his deid
faither, him that was killed at Prestonpans, had twice appeared tae him.
And we a' ken what _that_ aye means. Some o' you dragoon lads maybe saw
as muckle as ye cared for o' auld Scotland that day o' Prestonpans?"
"And if we did, Scottie, we made up for it later," bawled one of the two
dragoon non-commissioned officers.
"Ay? And whan was that, lad? At Falkirk, belike!"
"No, it wasn't at Falkirk, Scottie. But fine sport we had when we went
huntin' down them rebels about your Border country, after Culloden had
settled their business. By G----! I mind once I starved an old Scotch
witch that lived up there among your cursed hills. She was preaching,
and psalm-singing, and bragging about how the Lord would provide for the
widowed and fatherless, or some cant of that sort. But _I_ soon put her
to the test."
"Ay?" said a stern-faced, youngish man, dressed in the uniform of a
private of Sempil's Regiment, jumping up hurriedly in front of the
dragoon, "ay? And what did ye do?"
"Do?" replied the cavalryman; "why, I just sliced the throat of the old
witch's cow, and I cut all her garden stuff and threw it into the burn.
I'm thinking it would take a deal o' prayer to get the better o' that!
But, oh! no doubt the Lord would provide, as she said," sneered the man.
"And was that in Nithsdale?" asked the young Borderer.
"It was," said the dragoon.
"An' ye did that, an' ye hae nae thocht o' repentance?"
"Repentance! What's there to repent? D---- you, I tell you she was a
witch, and I gave her no more than a witch deserves," roared the
half-tipsy dragoon.
"Then, by God! I tell _you_ it was my mother that you mishandled that
day. Draw! you bloody dog! Draw!" shouted the now thoroughly roused
Borderer, snatching from its scabbard the sabre of a dragoon who stood
close at hand.
It was no great fight. The cavalryman had doubtless by far the greater
skill with the sabre; but drink muddled his brain and hampered his
movements, and the whirlwind attack of the younger man gave no rest to
his opponent nor opportunity to steady himself. In little more than a
minute the dragoon lay gasping out his life.
"Had ye rued what ye did, ye should hae been dealt wi' only by your
Maker," muttered the Borderer as the dead man's comrades bore away the
body. "Little did I look to see _you_ this day after a' they years, or
to have _your_ bluid on my hands. It was an ill chance that brought us
thegither again, and an ill day for me an' mine that lang syne brought
you into our quiet glen."
But the incident did not end here. The private soldier had slain his
superior in rank, and but for the strenuous representations of his
company commander and sure friend, a native of his own part of the
Border, it had gone hard with Private Maxwell.
The story, as told to his captain, was this. Maxwell, then a half-grown
boy, lived with his mother in a lonely cottage in a quiet Dumfriesshire
glen. They came of decent folk, but were very poor, sometimes in the
winter being even hard put to it to find sufficient food. The father,
and all the family but this one boy, were dead; the former had perished
on the hill during a great snowstorm, and the sons, long after, had all
died, swept off by an outbreak of smallpox. Thus the widow and her one
remaining boy were left almost in destitution; but by the exercise of
severe economy and by hard work, they managed to cling to their little
cottage.
One morning--it was a day in the summer of 1746; the heather was
bursting into bloom, shadows of great fleecy clouds trailed sleepily
over the quiet hillsides, larks sang high in the heavens, blue-bells
swung their heads lazily in the gentle breeze, and all things spoke of
peace--there came the tramp of horses down the glen, past the rocks
where the rowan-trees grew, and so up to the cottage door.
"Hi, old lady!" shouted the sergeant in charge of a half-dozen dragoons,
"we must ha' some'at to eat and drink. We've been scouring them infernal
hills since break o' day, and it's time we picked a bit."
"Weel, sirs," said the poor widow, "it's but little I hae gotten, but
that little ye shall freely hae." And she brought them "lang kale" and
butter, and for drink offered them new milk, saying, as she handed it to
the man, that this was her whole stock.
"Whole stock!" growled one who did not relish such food, "whole stock! A
likely story! I daresay, if the truth was known, the old hag's feeding a
rebel she's got hidden away in some snug hole hereaway."
"'Deed, sirs, there's no rebels here. An' that's a' my son an' me has to
live on."
"How do you live in this outlandish spot all the year round, then,
mistress?"
"Indeed, sir," said the woman, "the cow and the kailyaird, and whiles a
pickle oat meal, wi' God's blessing, is a' my _mailen_. The Lord has
provided for the widow and the faitherless, and He'll aye provide."
"We'll soon see about that," said the ruffian. With his sabre, and
paying no heed to the helpless woman's lamentations or to the
half-hearted remonstrances of his comrades, he killed the poor widow's
cow; then going to the little patch of garden, he tore up and threw into
the burn all the stock of kail.
"There, you old rebel witch," said he, with a heartless laugh, as the
party set forward again, "you may live on God's blessing now."
It broke the poor toil-worn widow's heart, and she died ere the summer
was ended. Lost to the ken of his few friends, her boy wandered
sorrowfully to another part of the country, and winter storms soon left
but the crumbling walls and broken roof of what had been his home.
Thirteen years, almost to a day, passed ere fate brought together again
the man who committed that foul wrong and his surviving victim. If
retribution came with halting foot, it came none the less surely, for
"though the mills of God grind slowly, they grind exceeding small."
HIGHWAYMEN IN THE BORDER
It can scarcely be said that the Border, either north or south of Tweed,
has ever as a field of operations been favoured by highwaymen. Fat
purses were few in those parts, and if he attempted to rob a farmer
homeward bound from fair or tryst--one who, perhaps, like Dandie Dinmont
on such an occasion, temporarily carried rather more sail than he had
ballast for--a knight of the road would have been quite as likely to
take a broken head as a full purse.
There has occasionally been some disposition to claim as a north country
asset, Nevison, the notorious highwayman, who is said to have been the
true hero of the celebrated ride to York, which, in his novel,
_Rookwood_, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth assigns to Dick Turpin. Nevison,
however, was a north countryman only in the sense that he was born in
Yorkshire, and he never did frequent any part of the north country, but
confined his operations chiefly to districts adjacent to London, where
he flew at higher game than in those days was generally to be found
travelling Border roads. Nor in reality was it he who took that great
ride to York. The feat was accomplished in the year 1676 by a man named
Nicks, if Defoe's account is to be relied on. Nicks committed a robbery
at Gadshill, near Chatham, at about four o'clock one summer's morning.
Knowing that, in spite of his crape mask, his victim had recognised him,
Nicks galloped to Gravesend, where, together with his mare, he crossed
the Thames by boat, then swung smartly across country to Chelmsford, and
thence on, with only necessary halts to bait his horse, by way of
Cambridge, through Huntingdon, and so on to the Great North Road.
Without ever changing his mount, he reached York early that evening,
having taken only fifteen hours for a journey of two hundred miles. If
the time is correct, she must have been a great mare, and he a
consummate horse-master. At his subsequent trial, as it was proved
beyond question that in the evening of the day on which the robbery took
place he had played bowls in York with well-known citizens, the jury,
holding it to be impossible that any person could have been on the same
day in two places so far apart as Gadshill and York, on that ground
acquitted the prisoner.
But if Nevison, nor Nicks, nor Turpin, ever crossed into Scotland, there
were others, less known to fame, who occasionally tried their fortune in
that country. In the early part of the year 1664, robberies, highway and
otherwise, were of extraordinary frequency in Scotland, and this was
attributed to the great poverty then prevalent amongst the people,
owing to "the haill money of the kingdom being spent by the frequent
resort of our Scotsmen at the Court of England."
In 1692-3 there seems to have been what one might almost call an
epidemic of highway robbery over the southern part of Scotland, and he
was quite a picturesque ruffian who robbed William M'Fadyen near
Dumfries on 10th December 1692. Or, rather, there were two ruffians
engaged in the affair. M'Fadyen was a drover who had been paid at
Dumfries a sum of £150 for cattle sold. Sleeping overnight in the town,
the drover started for home next morning before daylight. Possibly he
had seen at the inn the previous evening some one whose appearance or
manner made him uneasy, and being a cautious man, with a good deal of
money in his possession, he had hoped by an early start to give this
suspected person the slip.
A clear, cold December morning, stars winking frostily in a cloudless
sky, and a waning moon casting sharp black shadows over the whitened
ground, saw him out of Dumfries, and well on his homeward road. And, as
he blew on his fingers, and beat his unoccupied hand briskly against his
thigh, to warm himself withal, M'Fadyen chuckled to think how cleverly
and quietly he had slipped unnoticed from the inn and through the town.
They must be up early indeed who would weather on _him_! And so,
ruminating somewhat vain-gloriously, he pushed on over the ringing
ground, his horse snorting frosty breaths on the chill air, and inclined
to hump his back and squeal on the smallest excuse. Mile after mile
slipped easily behind him, and the sun began to show a blood-red face
over the hill; a "hare limped trembling through the frozen grass," and
crows cawed hungrily as they flew past on sluggish, blue-black wing,
questing for food. The world was awake now, and M'Fadyen reckoned that
by a couple of hours after noon he should be safe home with his money.
Only--who was that on the road ahead of him? A soldier by his coat,
surely, with his servant riding behind. Well, so much the better; that
would be company for him over the loneliest part of his ride, across the
moor which bore an evil name. So M'Fadyen pressed on, and soon he caught
up the two riders, first the servant, "mounted upon ane dark grey horse"
and armed with a "long gun"; then the master, also riding a dark grey
horse, and dressed in a scarlet coat with gold-thread buttons. A tall
man, the latter--a striking-looking man, quite a personage, with thin
refined face and high Roman nose; instead of a wig he wore his own brown
hair tied in a cue behind, and over one eye he had a notable
peculiarity, "a wrat (wart) as big as ane nut." In his holsters this
gentleman carried a brace of pistols.
Surely here was good fortune for M'Fadyen! A party so well armed could
afford to look with contempt on any highwayman that ever cried "Stand
and deliver" over all broad Scotland. And it was not long before the
honest drover, in the joy of his heart at finding himself in such goodly
company, had expressed to the red-coated stranger the pleasure it would
give him if he might be granted the escort across the moor of a
gentleman so well armed and mounted; "for," said he, "in sic ill times
it was maist mischancey wark to ride far ane's lane." Little objection
had the tall gentleman in red to make to such a proposition, and on they
rode, amicably enough, with just such dryness of manner on the
stranger's part as the humble drover might expect from an army officer,
yet nothing to keep his tongue from wagging. "It was a gey kittle bit
they were comin' to, where the firs stude, and he wad hae liked ill to
be rubbit. Muckle? O--oo, no; just a wee pickle siller, but nae man
likit to lose onything. And folk said they highwayman wad skin the
breeks aff a Hielandman. No that he was a Hielandman, though his name
did begin wi' a "Mac."
And so chattering, they had already won half-way across that lonely
stretch of moor regarding which the drover had had misgivings. And even
as they came abreast of that thick clump of stunted firs, up to M'Fadyen
rode the servant, pointing towards the trees, and saying: "This is our
way. Come ye wi' me."
There were few roads--such as they were--in the south of Scotland with
which M'Fadyen's business as a drover had not made him familiar, and
naturally he refused now to leave a track which he knew to be the right
one. Whereupon the servant up with his "long-gun" and struck him heavily
over the head with the butt; and as M'Fadyen strove to defend himself
and to retaliate, up rode the master, clapped a pistol to his breast,
and forced him to go with them behind the clump of trees. The last
M'Fadyen saw of his pleasant escort was the two knaves cantering over
the heath, bearing with them his cloak-bag containing his £150.
A great fuss was made over this robbery, and the Privy Council took the
matter up. The chief robber was undoubtedly an officer, said M'Fadyen,
and besides the large wart over his eye, there were other marks which
made him noticeable--for example, "the little finger of his left hand
bowed towards his loof." Notwithstanding these tell-tale marks, neither
robber was ever found; M'Fadyen and his hard-earned £150 had parted
company for ever. And though the Privy Council went so far as to
"recommend Sir James Leslie, commander-in-chief for the time being of
their Majesties' forces within this kingdom, to cause make trial if
there be any such person, either officer or soldier, amongst their
Majesties' forces, as the persons described," no one was ever brought
to book, either amongst the troops in Scotland, or amongst "the officers
which are come over from Flanders to levy recruits."
Not so fortunate as this scarlet-coated gentleman was Mr. Hudson,
_alias_ Hazlitt, who in 1770 stopped a post-chaise on Gateshead Fell,
near Newcastle, and robbed the occupant, a lady who was returning to
Newcastle from Durham. A poor-spirited creature was this Hudson, a
little London clerk gone wrong, and he trembled so excessively when
robbing the lady that she plucked up spirit, and, protesting that half a
guinea was all she had, got off with the loss of that modest sum, not
even having her watch taken. Despite his pistol, one cannot but feel
that of the two the lady was the better man, and that, had it occurred
to her, she might very readily have bundled the highwayman neck and crop
into her chaise, and handed him over to the authorities.